We will start series of posts about core changes which will be introduced in the next update. One of those things is 3D physics, which actually will be more like 2.5D Earlier we told, that we are going to turn the game physics from 2D into fully 3D and already released preview version of that new system. 3D is great and gives some great new possibilities, however it also brings some disadvantages too.

Advantages

• Possibility to rotate and place any module in 3D provides huge advantages related to ship constructor. In 3D, even with a small variations of modules it is possible to create large amount of various ship design. Also the ships no longer looks flat and large cannons places on top of the ships looks really nice.

Disadvantages

• Navigation is way more harder. In space there is not too much landmarks to understand position of your ship relative to something. Especially if we are talking about altitude. It turned out very hard to understand, this object is above or below your ship? Will it be obstacle or not? It theoretically can be solved with good navigation tools plus all asteroids can be put at the 0 plane, but that leads to another problem.
• Physics became less fun because collisions are rare. If all asteroids located at zero plane, you can just fly above an asteroids and don't worry about it anymore. In result, the space in fact, will became completely empty and boring.
• Technical issue but still. Implementation of navigation of AI in 3D will became extremely complex.
• Manual control of weapons will became useless because most likely enemy ship will be on different altitude than your ship, so all projectiles and lasers will miss the target. Of course there is a auto targeting mode, but manual control still can be fun.
• Placement of engines will became much harder. A lot of additional engines will be required on top and bottom of the ship, only just to stabilize its rotation. That does not gives more fun and just annoying.

How it will be done

• If part of the ship will be shoot off, it will be slowly pulled towards zero altitude.
  
• If the ship is quite tall and its center of mass a bit shifted up or down, the ship will slowly shift its position vertically to keep its center of mass at zero altitude.
• Angle of a ship can be a bit changed due external forces, but it will be automatically stabilized.
• During docking, If docking ports located on different altitude, ships will be a bit pulled up or down to align it for docking.